Editing PhotosFrom Nero MediaHome, you can click the Edit Photo button for some basic image correction and enhancements. The editing is non-destructive, meaning you can revert to the original at any time. Keep in mind that this ain't Photoshop, but there's enough for most folks. You get auto-exposure, color, crop, straighten, and red-eye removal. A Brighten slider does what it says, and a "Backlight" adjustment seemed just to darken the image—there's no contrast, but there are color temperature and saturation sliders. Eight Instagram-style retro effects round out Nero's photo toolbox, and they're not anywhere as powerful as the Instagram ones, frankly. The "Frames" button didn't do anything for me, though the Help says it adds a white border.

Playing Video and MusicMediaHome plays video as well, and I was impressed that it had no trouble playing my 4K (aka Ultra HD) test video from a GoPro Hero III Black Edition[COMMERCE]. The app is also useful for when you plug USB storage: as well as importing the media, it can show you the devices' used and available storage graphically, along with metadata for each individual file.

When it comes to music, MediaHome can display album art, play the songs, and even point you to downloads of more music from the same artist. In a similar way to photo viewing, the app shows info in the right side panel for the selected album or song—rating, play time, artist, genre, and so on.

An interesting option in MediaHome is entered through the button that looks like a TV—media streaming, you can turn this on to stream anything managed by the program to any DLNA-capable device. You can do this with Windows Media player, but MediaHome makes it much easier. MediaHome lets you set streaming quality and see which devices on your home network have access and remove them if you want. This worked easily with an Xbox in our labs, but playback was staggered, and when I set the video to repeat, it still only played once on the Xbox.

Nero RecodeRecode is a key selling point for the suite: it's where you select your media and have it automatically reformatted to play on a different device. You can drag-and-drop files onto its large target area at the top of its own program window, or open it from MediaHome. Video is probably the most important content for this treatment, since most smartphones and tablets have no problem displaying photos of any resolution or playing audio.

When I right-clicked on a video in MediaHome and chose "Convert with Nero Recode" the app opened with my video on the right, and a list of target devices on the left. These included most popular smartphones and tablets, and consoles—iPhones, iPads, Samsung Galaxies, and Windows Phone 8 among them. A slider below the target options let me choose quality, from smallest file size to largest.

You can choose a bunch of files to be placed in a recoding in a queue for batch operation. I hit "Start encoding," and after a few seconds for a relatively small video clip of less than a minute, I could play the file in MediaHome or see where it was saved on disk. It was then up to me to get the file on the device.

Mobile DevicesWhen I plugged in a Windows Phone or an Android phone to the PC, Nero MediaHome added an entry for it in the left source sidebar, and let me browse any photos and music. I could also switch to the Info tab to see its storage usage. I could right click or drag any content overseen by Nero onto the phone's entry to copy it to that device. By default, the program converted music to standard MP3 and images to JPG, but didn't convert video. All of that, however, is editable from a sprocket-shaped settings button.

Android users can get more out of suite's tools by installing the Nero MediaHome WiFi Sync app. This is a very simple app: There's just a big on-off slider and a sync button at the bottom. But I saw nothing in MediaHome when I enabled syncing on the app. (I tried with a few different Wi-Fi networks and routers, and am working with Nero staff to see what the problem is. I'll update this with what I find out.) Users of the free MediaHome version will need to purchase a wireless sync add-on, but the Platinum suite includes it. Nero's promotional site also says you're supposed to be able to stream video to an Android phone, but I didn't see this feature in the software.

Popping a disc into the DVD tray opened Nero Disc-to-Device (not an option from the start screen), which offers to send the content to a connected device. The program installation also adds a "send to device" right-click option in File Explorer for this. Since iPhones don't allow direct file access, one option in Disc-to-Device is iTunes, from which you can transfer media to Apple's devices.

I chose to send my test DVD, Rooster Teeth, to my connected Nokia 1020, and I could choose which chapters to send and preview the video in a small window. The 1 hour 41 minute video took just over 10 minutes to transfer. It played fine on the phone, but the aspect ratio was a little off; I expect that the program got the wrong Windows Phone model, since it displayed Nokia 909 as the phone name.

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Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine’s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine’s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of Web Services (pretty much the progenitor of Web 2.0) for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine’s Solutions section, which in those days covered programming techniques as well as tips on using popular office software. Most recently he covered Web...
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